Radley Balko has been following a disturbing case out of Berwyn Heights, Maryland (D.C. suburbs), where SWAT agents charged into the house of Mayor Cheye Calvo, shot the mayor’s dogs (two black labs), and held the mayor and his mother-in-law in handcuffs and interrogated them at gunpoint as suspected drug dealers (the chilling details from the mayor himself). Apparently, someone in Los Angeles* mailed a 30lb package of marijuana to the mayor’s address, which undercover cops eventually delivered to the mayor’s wife prior to the assault. Local law enforcement is upset they were not notified first, and apparently, the raid has turned out to be a huge mistake. The mayor’s house wasn’t the intended recipient of the drug package, and the SWAT team didn’t have a no-knock warrant to conduct the raid anyway. Yet the Prince George’s County police refuse to apologize for the violent tactics or the puppycide.
It’s a fiasco on several levels, and apparently killing dogs during a raid is standard procedure, even if they are labs, who are only likely to slobber an intruder into submission. Really, it’s too much.
*Corrected. The package was mailed from LA but flagged as drugs in Arizona.
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